Fischer’s win in the primary Tuesday is a testament to the fact that politics is still about campaigns and that money isn’t the be-all, end-all.

While Fischer’s win wasn’t necessarily a tea party win, it was reminiscent of the insurgent GOP candidacies of 2010, in which a candidate’s character and politics often meant more than money and infrastructure.

If state Sen. Deb Fischer pulls an upset in the Nebraska GOP Senate primary today, we will all be treated to a familiar storyline: The Republican Party establishment has been rebuked yet again, it will say, and could pay a price for it in the general election.

Don’t believe it.Deb Fischer makes a point during a Nebraska Republican Senate candidate's debate on May 1. (Jeff Beiermann, AP)

Fischer’s win would certainly be an upset — she’s run a meagerly funded campaign and barely registered in the polls for most of the race — but it doesn’t exactly fit the tea party bill.

And the idea that Republicans are enduring a redux of the tea party-dominated 2010 primary season is unfounded at this point.

Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning (R) has been the favorite from the start to succeed retiring Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), but his hold on that mantle has always been tenuous.

First, state Treasurer Don Stenberg nabbed the backing of the influential Club for Growth and Sen. Jim DeMint’s (R-S.C.) Senate Conservatives Fund. Then, former senator Bob Kerrey got in the race and gave Democrats a fighting chance.

But with just five days until the GOP primary, neither Stenberg nor Kerrey is looking like Bruning’s biggest obstacle. Instead, the until-now-dark-horse candidate in the race, state Sen. Deb Fischer, has asserted herself and — according to politicos in Nebraska — has a fighting chance to usurp Bruning on Tuesday.

Early 2011 was an avalanche of good news for Republicans intent on regaining control of the Senate.

Early 2012 has been a reality check.

Sen. Olympia Snowe’s (R-Maine) retirement announcement Tuesday and former senator Bob Kerrey’s (D-Neb.) announcement Wednesday that he will seek a return to the Senate punctuated what has been a gradual rolling back of the GOP’s early momentum in the race for control of the Senate in 2012.

Republicans are still primed to compete for a Senate majority, which would require a four-seat gain, but the map looks significantly more difficult than it did a few weeks ago — to say nothing of the political environment itself.

The Nebraska Republican primary was supposed to be a coronation for state Attorney General Jon Bruning. Instead, it has revealed some significant holes in the political armor of the man many GOPers expected to beat Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson next year.

Four years after he stepped aside for former governor Mike Johanns in an open Nebraska Senate race, Bruning finally got his chance — and a golden one at that.